Universality

Evelyn F. Heywood

When Jesus prayed, in the following words, "That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us," he was proclaiming a divine universality which is the basic teaching of Christian Science. This was and is the mission of the Christ, to bring, without qualification or hindrance, to all who will receive it, the blessings and privileges of sonship. He had come first to his own people, to those who, because of promise and prophecy, had greater reason to expect him than had others, but he foresaw and foretold the time when there would be one fold and one shepherd.

Jesus came preaching the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and everywhere he found himself opposed and assailed by formalism and narrowness, by tradition and precedent, by those things which preclude and separate, which alienate and destroy. Yet because of his relationship with the Father he knew that the oneness of God and man is an eternal fact, and therefore can never be disproved. Though heaven and earth might pass away, his words would not pass away.

When the Science of Christianity was revealed to Mary Baker Eddy, she saw not only that the appeal and power of Truth are universal, and that all men are included in its loving benediction, but that in the understanding of God's allness, evil is disclosed as nothing. On pages 102 and 103 of "Miscellaneous Writings," in confirmation of this fact she has written, "Science defines omnipresence as universality, that which precludes the presence of evil." Our Leader saw that the allness and oneness of Love and of Life must mean the forever banishment of hatred and of mortality. Throughout her writings and in her whole attitude towards humanity, she showed the universality of Truth as it had been revealed to her. She demanded of her followers that they also show forth in their lives the universal nature of Love, that they may draw to them, in the way Jesus did, the sick and weary.

As through Christian Science the universality of good is taught and practiced, the world's claims to dominate and to terrorize, to satisfy and reward, will be seen in all their nothingness. Continuing prayerfully and persistently to bear witness to this spiritual fact of omnipresence, men find that their beliefs in the circumscribed, the exclusive, the selective, whether personal or national, give way; that partisanship, intolerance, prejudice, are replaced by an understanding which is able spiritually to uplift and draw all men to it. A state of thought which has accepted as true and powerful that which denies the universality of good, must abandon its false premise when it learns that the new heaven and new earth are not afar off, but here and now.

None who have gained the vision of what Christian Science is unfolding in benediction for the world, can be willing to continue in a path which is limited to merely personal service and affection, however active and devoted these may be. The call to each one is for universal brotherhood, embracing all men everywhere in the bonds of love; claiming for them, whether they still seem afar or near at hand, the heritage of "one fold, and one shepherd." The one infinite Mind does not register exclusion for some and inclusion for others. In a comprehension of good, what benefits one, benefits all; competition and rivalry, monopoly and domination, thus fall away, and the forever reciprocity of giving and receiving takes their place.

From the time of her discovery of Christian Science, our Leader dedicated herself wholly and always unreservedly to the universal needs of mankind. Because of her labors, men and women in the remotest parts of the world were to learn through Christian Science the universal nature of omnipresent Love. In speaking of those calls which came to her because of her great love for humanity and her comprehension of its needs, Mrs. Eddy writes on page 147 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," "From the interior of Africa to the utmost parts of the earth, the sick and the heavenly homesick or hungry hearts are calling on me for help, and I am helping them."

May we, her followers, listen as earnestly and with as spiritual intent as did she, for those who are calling to us for help, wherever they may be. May the universality, the selflessness, of our love hasten the coming to human consciousness of universal good, of the millennium, to which our Leader has thus referred on pages 239 and 240 of Miscellany: "Its impetus, accelerated by the advent of Christian Science, is marked, and will increase till all men shall know Him (divine Love) from the least to the greatest, and one God and the brotherhood of man shall be known and acknowledged throughout the earth."

Evelyn F. Heywood

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